Staff Member from Geneva Visits the Kart-e-Char School

Sep 2019

Our team member in Geneva was given the golden opportunity to visit the beautiful country of Afghanistan for the first time in 5 years! This allowed her to not only to visit the office of AfD in Kabul, but also to stop by one of our schools for street working children in Kart-e-Char, in a very populated area of Kabul. The experience there, after seeing all of the happy faces of the children, made her very avid to share what she observed in the school.

The Office

The office of this campus of the school is seen to be very well equipped and well organised, with a dedicated filing system of the activities, students, and teachers in the school. This office allows the AfD team in Kart-e-Char to take visitors who wish to learn more about what we are doing, as well as possible future partners of the school for some business talks.

The Classrooms

Recently, the students and teachers decided to transform the bleak concrete room into a cosy and warm environment for themselves and any new student who would wish to join! Now, the walls are plastered with numerous colourful paintings, has cut-outs of numbers and the alphabet on the walls just to remind the kids what they have learned and to have it stick with them, as well as the ceiling has a wonderful flower decoration, reminiscent of a cosy room for kids. The hall has a specific shelf for bags and stationaries, where the kids are able to store their belongings safely and for convenience. This way, they can never forget anything for their school and be always prepared and eager to learn!

The Library

The kids have become so motivated by learning, they have requested a new small library! Their motivation and interest to better themselves, to learn and acquire more and more knowledge has driven them to request this from the teachers and AfD. We are currently hands-on to resolve this and give the children what they desire – a new place where to read, take books home and learn more outside of school hours.

The Football

We have hired a new football coach, Mr. Mustafa Sakhizada! He is an experienced coach who has committed most of his time to teach the children how to play football and to develop new exercise plans and activities. The children, absorbing the motivation of their new football coach, have become more and more advanced in the sports, creating a feeling of success and commitment amongst them. Since the coach continuously creates new opportunities for collaboration with other teams, the children learn how to respect the other players and to have the right spirit of dedication towards their own team, learning how to collaborate and commit to earn their desired victory in the matches against other teams. Additionally, through football, they also learn how to understand the desires of others, how to work in a team effectively, how to communicate properly, as well as how to respect others and become a helping hand during some very hard moments in the games! All in all, football has become a nourishing part of the daily life of the students – they are able to be physically active while also receiving the enjoyment of a game for their soul and learning vital social skills to be productive in the future. Football has really been an amazingly positive change in their lives!

Conclusion

All in all, AfD remains very satisfied with the progress our students in Kart-e-Char make and we are more than glad to see their increasing curiosity and motivation to learn! We will continue supporting the staff in Kabul with all the resources we can allocate to advance our schools for street working children and help these children to develop a future off the streets!

However, despite the hard work AfD does, there are some factors out of our control which affect the work for not only our school’s students, but every single student in the country – namely, the electricity shortages which are continuously experienced every day. Therefore, seeing the effect this can have on different educational material and its distribution, we are actively developing new methods to record the attendance of our students and to assist the learning processes without using devices using electricity directly!